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Comment by kaiwen1 | Hacker News Reader

In counterpoint, a recent 60 Minutes piece on Paul MacCartney showed him playing an impromptu concert in his local pub. While playing one of his old hits – I can't recall which one – he suddenly started to stumble and couldn't remember the lyrics. Fortunately the audience was signing along and knew every word.

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> In counterpoint, a recent 60 Minutes piece on Paul MacCartney showed him playing an impromptu concert in his local pub. While playing one of his old hits – I can't recall which one – he suddenly started to stumble and couldn't remember the lyrics. Fortunately the audience was signing along and knew every word.

I'm sure that the 80-year old Paul McCartney deserves a free pass when he misses a line or two from an impromptu song.

There's also the possibility that he's mixing up lyrics from earlier drafts/renditions of the song. But I think the key is understanding that a freakish memory does not mean that the person has insanely good recall regardless of the situation.

... or that it doesn't start to falter in your 80's

I saw him live in Montreal about 3 years ago and he played non-stop impeccably for 3 hours, dancing around stage, switching instruments, no break. I had to take a bathroom break. I'm pretty sure he's not faltering mentally yet…

One thing I've noticed about older people, and even myself (nowhere near 80).

They have much more uneven cognitive performance. There's just days where their thinking is crap.

I'm 43. I'm nearly as sharp as my peak as I was 20 years ago (and I have a lot more knowledge). But I can only access that "peak" on maybe a third of days now.

I saw him on tour in 1990 and he got lost in a Beatles song on stage and had a laugh about it. That’s said, everything I’ve read or seen about him points to him having an encyclopedic memory of songs.

Those slips - I'd assume - tend to occur with people who have very high trust in memory. Sometimes something gets messed up. Doesn't even have to be due to forgetting something but rather overmemorizing versions of a song getting entangled upon accessing them. People who don't trust their memory will rehearse more thoroughly.

He's done this multiple times - We Can Work It Out from Unplugged, for example. I think in some cases, it's semi-rehearsed. But not in all cases, certainly, and he can just roll with it apparently.

This sort of thing is sometimes an act. I recall a friend mentioning him (with his whole band) missing an entire verse to some song, only to confess the mistake and "correct" it at the end. Tomfoolery.

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